Transwoman on women's ward

[Sallycinnamum]

Had a minor gynae procedure today but nevertheless was very anxious leading up to it.

Was wheeled back to the day ward to be greeted quite literally (started waving at me) by a transwoman in the bed opposite me.

There was no doubt he was a man and being completely immobile due to a spinal anaesthetic with no underwear on I asked the nurse to completely close the curtains so he couldn't look directly at me.

Spoke to a nurse who confirmed it wasn't a mixed ward.

I am so upset. I felt so vulnerable especially as I couldn't walk so had to pee into a bedpan in clear earshot of him.

I've emailed PALS but I feel so bloody fed up of it all. Had a man next to me in the M&S lingerie changing rooms a few weeks ago and was made to feel like a total bigot when I complained to the staff.

I encounter 2 transwomen occasionally. One in church - pigtails and 40ish is not a good look and his voice would give him away if nothing else did (but everything does) - and one in a shop in town - pinafore dress and Alice band and 40ish is also not a good look and everything about him tells you he is a man.
Oh, there was one at the book fair I attended. Also pinafore and 40ish - what is it with pinafores?
All three are tall, rangy men.
I have never met any of these transwomen who you can't tell from the 'real' thing.
I encounter transmen as well - equally visible.
Entirely pee'd off with it all.😡

Utter bollocks. A male person cannot live as a woman. He claimed to gave “presented” as a woman and told the nurse he had kept his tackle. He was attempting to use the nurse and the other women in the ward as part of his fetish.

Fuck off with your accusations of discrimination.

Crikey, they’re all on here today. GCSEs finished, have they?

Living as a woman is not the same thing as being a woman. That’s what the “as” means. If he was a woman, the “as” would be unnecessary.

Putting on a dress and calling yourself Diana does not turn a man into a woman, whether he’s been doing it for five minutes or 45 years.

Wards are meant to be single sex, and if the OP requests a female nurse/doctor for an intimate procedure, such as occurs on a gynae ward, they have very little reason to say no.

Trans “w*men” are men. They are men who don’t want to be around men because they are rejecting their menability . They need their own trans places with trans people transing.

Leave women alone … makes no sense that trans would want to force theyselves into places where they don’t belong.

No, he is not as he is a man. You can’t change sex.

The end.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Men have no right to be on the single sex wards of women. You’ve been lied to for years by Stonewall et al, who are the ones who have encouraged discriminatory behaviour and practices towards women.

I saw on a hospital ward, private wing, rooms barricaded with signs saying Female only - No Male Staff.
Obvious from burka women going in & out that Muslim Women get more rights than others.

Really don’t understand how religion trumps all. I think I might on NHS forms change religion and insist on female only.

Stonewall is a business selling training, advice to organizations etc. they benefit financially from forcing complex crazy woke policy.

They created the need to make the ££££. & they need to get cancelled.

I wish you lot would make up your minds, because one week we’re told that we’re ‘scared’ of a teeny, tiny percentage of people who are trans, and the next week you’re telling us that we’re encountering ‘multiple of them a day’ indicating that there’s thousands of them, which is it? Lying is really hard work when you can’t remember the previous lies isn’t it?

You could also ‘think on’ what women say. A good place to start is here with a vulnerable woman, still immobile from a recent invasive gynae procedure along with bleeding and leaking urine, aside from her worries regarding the reason for the procedure. A procedure that only a woman could need. She has been placed on a single sex ward that turns out to have a man on it. It is worse that it’s a man pretending to be a woman rather than on account of bed availability.

When you’ve thought on why the man in this situation is your priority, let us know.

And if by ‘all the same’, you mean ‘biological women’, then it does appear, you have something right.

Also worth noting that the £250 flat rate fine for breaches was removed as part of the consultations for the renewal of the NHS Standard Contract in 2021/2022.

From the 2025/2026 NHS Standard Contract -

'39.9 The Contract no longer makes provision for financial consequences to be applied
where a provider breaches a Local Quality Requirement.'

Oh please go away.

That would only apply if she was exactly 45 years old.

Yes there’s nothing like being the unwitting, unwilling bit player in someone’s autogynophilia paraphilia fantasy that they are a woman too. Yo sis , isn’t this fun! All girls together! Let’s run, flap our hands and giggle.

I’d like to refer you to the Supreme Court ruling, which states that such a person is a man and will always be a man. You are being very misogynistic.

I’d also like you to ask you what “living as a woman” means. As a woman myself, I’d love to make sure I’m getting it right. Does it mean having a lower salary, having a much lower pension, being many more times more likely to be raped, being many more times more likely to be a victim of DV? Or do trans-identifying men just like to pick out the more enjoyable aspects of being a woman?

Pray do enlighten us.

It's always hair flicking, skirts and makeup, it's never increased mental load, reduced pay and caring duties.

Ten years ago stonewall added the ‘t’ to lgb as they felt they had “peaked” with gay rights - right, who’s next? They made trans rights their mission promoting dubious charities (looking at you Mermaids) and had their own founders turn on them (the wonderful Simon Fanshawe). Couple that with Maria Miller adding “gender identity” into the gender reform act , along with the online navel -gazing that covid evoked and this is why we now have men in women’s wards. Appalling.

This has got nothing to do with sexual fantasy, how utterly ridiculous.
She was informing the nurse of her background and choices. She has probably spent her entire life justifying.
Just because a trans person doesn't have surgery, doesn't make them any less trans. In fact you don't need surgery for a gender recognition certificate which allows you to live in the gender of your choice! She is female. Therefore, why should she be forced into a side room because someone else has taken a dislike? She has every right to be on that ward as someone who identified as trans female.
No patient should be left uncovered with curtains open so I'm not entirely sure what the issue is. The OP didn't have to flash herself!
It's absolutely disgusting reading the comments and how so many people are incredibly discriminatory towards trans gender individuals. This country is going backwards not forwards.

Hello. I'm sorry for turning up 11 pages into this discussion - you've all been busy this evening?! So there are a few things to say. Apologies to any NHS staff if I am mangling this bed management explanation?!

Not all wards are single sex. There were promises made about eliminating "mixed sex accomodation" initially in 2009 but there are a number of permitted breaches. Often in A&E or emergency or acute settings. Other times in things like day units, children's wards or for dialysis centres where there is less issue with being undressed and noone is sleeping or drugged up.

There are also issues of Bed Management which affect trusts who have to be flexible with the beds based on who is coming in. So sometimes there are single sex bays rather than whole wards. And there are some places which have single rooms usually for infection control, privacy or security either in decent numbers in specialist hospitals or just a small number supplementing the larger wards.

So in most cases the NHS will try to place people in single sex bays or wards but there are times when that is not possible. Either because of the ward set up or because there has been a breach due to shortage of beds etc. The policies talk about a breach being reported and the patient getting an apology - but it will depend on the ward and if it is an accepted reason. The Trusts report monthly to DHSC who publish the results. Trusts with older estates tend to have higher reports than newer hospitals.

What our audit has found is that buried at the back of the 2009 guidance is an Appendix which permits gender self ID. It is not linked to the document and it is not listed as an approved breach so I think that it is on a shaky legal footing. However the Stonewall and Rainbow badges have encouraged the updating of Acommodation policies on the basis of Self ID. We are yet to find a policy which protects single sex spaces - even though this is the complete opposite of what the policies say on their front page and what has been promised to the public by 2 (maybe 3) different Secretaries of State. False advertising basically!

So the legal position clarified on 16th April is that trans people should not be on the wards of the "gender they present as" and Wes Streeting said it should be single rooms where possible. However many trusts have said they will wait for the EHRC guidance before they change policy. Obviously this leaves them open to complaints and then legal challenge - but I genuinely think that many managers have no idea this unlawful because they have had 15 years of "training" telling them otherwise. All the medical policies are written by subject experts and NHS staff assume they are all completely trustworthy - it doesn't occur to them that the EDI people can't even list out the 9 protected characteristics from the Equality Act correctly! If they can't even make that list correct then it doesn't instill confidence in the rest. In additon there are many without Equality Impact Assessments (legal requirement) or they are completely inadequate.

Sorry for the ramble but that is the summary of the current situation. Hopefully it will fall into line with the law very soon but it may take people like the OP speaking up about how practices are currently unlawful...

Did you write that as obnoxiously as it reads?

Aren’t you worried about the sex of staff on wards? There are documented cases of long-term
incapacitated women ending up pregnant. The only reason the staff members using their jobs to rape vulnerable women were caught was because of the pregnancies.

It depends. If the ward or bay has been allocated as single sex, then by having a male in with females the NHS has broken the Equality Act - and also 15 years worth of promises to the public about single sex care. That is a civil law case rather than a criminal one. NHS policy up to recent times has been unlawful - allowing gender self ID. They don't ask for GRCs because they are terrified of being prosecuted for revealing that they have seen one. So there are 3 responses we have identified if there is a TW on the ward with women and someone says something:

1. No that is a woman.
2. Yes but that is policy - tough luck
3. You are a filthy bigot and we will refuse you treatment if you don't keep quiet.

There are examples in the press of all of these. Most worrying in Kent in 2022 when a woman was raped and when the police came to investigate the staff went with Option 1 above -for a whole year until the CCTV was released which did show a male on the ward. So it is not funny especially as the NHS do not record sexual assaults very accurately or at all in the Datix.
The approach has increasingly caused problems for women because across the general population numbers have increased from about 1 in 13,000 in 2004 to 1 in 260 people in the 2022 Scottish Census (Can't use the ONS because they messed up the question)

Obnoxious to me is more like disrespecting women’s privacy and dignity and rushing to a woman’s thread on the feminism board to tell her she’s wrong in having boundaries. But I suppose we’re all different.

I would be upset too. I haven’t read all of the responses and you may well get opposing views but on the balance of probability in your circumstances I think we, women, would be upset too. Good luck complaining. Not okay to assume people are okay with these things. Xx